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witchcdg: MAME ROM Information.

- There are 12 parameters to program. All of them are unknown. To program them, use the HOLD keys, CANCEL key, DEAL + HOLD keys and DEAL + CANCEL.

WIP:

- 12th March 2012: Roberto Fresca - I'm currently working on an extended hardware manufactured by Video Klein. It's the same hardware they used for Witch Card (with CPU BOX and a lot of nasty protections) but (ab)using of banking, to push the hardware to the limits. Also they added some sort of Dallas Timekeeper. The system can handle up to 16 banks of 3bpp graphics, thing that is completely insane for this kind of hardware. Fortunatelly not all the banks were used, so I was able to figure out the existent graphics. I should have figured out before, because for simpler games (as Wild Witch) they used roms sized 0x8000 bytes to store 2 or 3 banks of 0x800 bytes each, wasting a lot of ROM space. So, I also changed Wild Witch and Jolli Witch to run in this extended hardware. These games lack of the original biplolar PROM dump, but I figured out the palette differences. There are two bits (one by color) that are different to the generic color PROM, producing a lot of garbage in the screen if you're trying to run the program in a regular witchcard board. And Wild Witch wearing correct colors, and running in the extended hardware.

- 20th January 2011: Roberto Fresca - After 2 years of attempts (in fact were 3 or 4 *deep* attempts) I got the Video Klein sets working. Addressing tricks, different kind of NVRAM (Dallas), and a lot of checks were involved. I did some cleanups (the set witchcde is in fact Jolli Witch). This one and a new set dumped by Team Europe (Wild Witch) are both based on the 6T/12T system from Video Klein (CPU box + Dallas DS1210 + battery backed RAM). Also each set has 2 games (Jolli Witch has a Witch Card selectable through a DIP switch, and Wild Witch has Witch Game in the same way).

- 27th September 2010: Roberto Fresca - Damn thing with my ghetto machine. A single line change, and the linker takes hours to finish. This is totally insane, so I'm currently developing on an old source tree (way outdated, previous to the C++ stuff) just to keep my mental health. But this isn't cheap... Once worked, I need to do several changes to bring each driver to the XXI century, and sometimes they don't work as expected. I know that this is not the best solution, but at least allow me to continue with my work in some way. There are several things that are being worked and I never posted a WIP about. Some of them have more than a whole year of work trying to figure out and get them working. I'll try to do a big push to the following stuff so I can get a bit of peace soon. THE DAY WITCH CARD GOT ENHANCED SOUND: This is the original Falcon version of Witch Card. It's running in a Falcon original PCB marked 831 1.1. This board has place for a second encrypted CPU, plus extra ROM and RAM. Fortunately this sector is unpopulated. The hardware is a heavily modified (and enhanced) Bonanza's Golden Poker. They replaced the discrete sound circuitry with an AY-3-8910, sending data and address commands in a multiplexed way through the normal discrete channel from a single 8bit PIA port out. Once hooked the device and demuxed the data/commands, the final sounds are very impressive. Also the cards have a nice 'punk' effect (green hair, crown, etc...) due to a possible bad dumped bipolar PROM. The game is now working properly, with enhanced sounds and button-lamps. Also another rare Witch Card set dumped by Team Europe. The graphics are different (chars are very noticeable). And finally the big monster from Video Klein was defeated! Video Klein produced one of the most evil twisted/obfuscated hardware mods (with an epoxy CPU box). The game now is working properly with sound and lamps. Only needs proper hopper emulation.

- 4th December 2008: Roberto Fresca - Thanks to Guru, that kindly dumped an original Witch Card board from Video Klein (and a scary epoxy CPU/program/protection block), we have it running now as the parent set. The game is not working yet due to protection. An unknown 40-pin IC inside the big epoxy block is acting as a MCU. I strongly think is another PIA mapped at $2108-$210b. Hope Guru can trace the IC connections to have an attempt to ID this mysterious device. As soon as you insert a credit, there are some writes and reads to the IC and the program flow goes to the hell...

- 3rd November 2008: Guru - With all the work going on at Roberto Fresca's site I thought it might be a good time to pull out an old Witch Card PCB that was sent to me by Taucher several years ago. I dumped it pretty quickly but Roberto said the main program was missing. There's an epoxy block on the board in a socket so of course the program is in there. After some creative chiseling the contents was revealed fairly quickly, in about 10 minutes. What a pathetic epoxy block that was. Even an ant could have opened it! In the blob there's a R6502P CPU, a 27128 EPROM, an 82S129 Bipolar PROM and a 40 pin chip with the surface scratched. That may or may not be a MCU or something else sinister, we'll wait and see what Roberto says. Anyway, that's another job done!

- 1st November 2008: Roberto Fresca - After a hard analysis, the Witch Card hardware emulation was improved. Now the double-up feature and the witch game are working! Each time you win a double-up, a little witch with a big number inside is added (maximum 3). When you lose/take credits, a kind of slots game starts. The witches numbers start to run and you have some attempts to win an extra bonus. However, only the spanish sets are full working. The english set was brute hacked to always lose the double-up and avoid the witch game.

- 0.127u8: Roberto Fresca added Witch Card (english) (Unknown 1991) and clones (spanish, set 1) and (spanish, set 2). This game is derivated from Golden Poker. The hardware has a feature called BLUE KILLER. Using the original intensity line, the PCB has a bridge that allow (as default) turn the background black. Except goodluck, all other games running in this hardware were designed to wear black background. Rewrote pmpoker.c driver (first part) [Roberto Fresca, Grull Osgo]: Rewrote all the ROM loads based on these changes. Defined MASTER Xtal & CPU clock. Fixed the visible area based on M6845 registers. Improved the lamps layouts to be more realistic. Renamed/cleaned all sets based on code/hardware analysis. Added intensity bit to the color system. Implemented the blue killer bit for Witch Card hardware. Implemented the extended graphics addressing bit for Witch Card hardware. Rewrote the graphics & color decode system based on schematics. No more patched codes. Changed the char gfx bank structure and rom load according to the new routines. Adjusted the amount of color codes and PROM region size accordingly. Updated all notes.

- 12th October 2008: Roberto Fresca - Since several weeks ago I'm working in pmpoker.c driver again. A ton of things were changed/improved, so I'm rewritting the whole thing in some steps. One of the most expected improvements is the DISCRETE SOUND SUPPORT for ALL games. Now we can enjoy the sounds of games like Golden Poker Double Up and Jack Potten's Poker. Also there are new upcoming games. Some of them are very rare. Here some snaps... Witch Card: One of the most wanted. There are 12 unknown parameters to setup the game. Still can't get the Witch Game bonus round. Super Loco 93: An addictive 3-cards game. Very rare. Buena Suerte!: Argentine reprogrammed version of Golden Poker. Running on Witch Card hardware. And yes... The background is BLACK!